Performing Protest in Singapore: Performance Tactics in Brother Cane and Don’t Give Money to the Arts

Abstract In the early hours of 1 January 1994, Josef Ng concluded his 25-minute performance artwork Brother Cane (1994) by snipping his pubic hair. The performance created a public furore, resulting in the cessation of public funding towards performance artworks for ten years. Undeterred by the backlash, Tang Da Wu created and performed Don’t Give Money to the Arts (1995) to protest the no-funding rule: during the opening of a state-sponsored exhibition, the artist approached the president of Singapore while wearing a jacket embroidered with the words “Don’t Give Money to the Arts”. Although it was as explicit in its criticism of the government and its policies, Tang was not penalised for his performance. In this paper, I conduct a comparative analysis of these two works to examine how protest art – with a focus on the performance art form – navigates the cultural hegemony in Singapore by comparing the tactics used in both performances by analysing how and why Tang managed to escape punishment for his scathing performance while Ng did not. Specifically, I look at how the performances navigated the “out-of-bound markers” and concealed their dissent, and how the artists controlled the documentations produced. The answers to this question provide us with important insights into how protest art continues to adapt to and resist the mutating systems of control within authoritarian states.

In the early hours of  January , Josef Ng (b. , Singapore) performed Brother Cane () to an audience of -odd people, including a reporter from a local paper (Fig. ). Ng created the performance to protest the use of entrapment by the Singapore police and the caning of gay men caught cruising. Ng concluded his -minute performance with the snipping of his pubic hair. The performance ended with rousing applause. The reporter who was present in the audience, however, did not have as favourable a review of the performance. On  January , an image of Ng's bare buttocks filled the frontpage of The New Paper, a widely-circulated local newspaper; it was accompanied by the caption "Pub (l)ic Protest". The report seemingly questioned whether Ng's performance could be considered art.  The media coverage of Brother Cane created a public uproar which resulted in the government coming out to denounce the performance by Ng as well as making the decision to withdraw all public funding for performance art.  The artist was also charged with committing an 'obscene' act and banned from all future public performances.  Undeterred by the backlash, including the punishment incurred by Ng for his performance, Tang Da Wu (b. , Singapore) created and performed Don't Give Money to the Arts () the following year to protest the no-funding rule (Fig. ). At the opening of a state-sponsored exhibition, Tang approached Ong Teng Cheong, who was then the president of Singapore, while wearing a jacket with the words "Don't Give Money to the Arts" (Fig.  ). Through the simple gesture of speaking to the president, Tang made Ong an unwitting collaborator in the artist's protest. Although Don't Give Money to the Arts created a moment of direct confrontation between the artist and a the president and was as explicit in its criticism of the government and its policies, and the artist performed in public without obtaining a license a rule that became more strictly enforced after the Brother Cane debacle -Tang was not This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. penalised for his actions. On the contrary, he continued to receive public support and funding for his projects, and Don't Give Money to the Arts was eventually acquired into the national collection.
This disproportionate response to the two protest artworks is the focus of this paper. I examine the reasons why Ng was punished for his performance, Brother Cane, while Tang managed to escape penalisation for his. More specifically, this paper looks at the different aesthetic techniques used in both works to understand how protest artworks in Singapore, with a focus on the performance art form, navigate the control of the authoritarian government. I have chosen to compare these two works as they were received differently despite the fact that both works were explicitly critical of the government and its policies. Tang's performance was also created in reaction to Brother Cane as one of the aims of Don't Give Money to the Arts is to protest the no-funding rule which resulted from Ng's performance. In my analysis, I examine the different institutions used by the government to try and control performances of dissent as well as the ways that the performances navigated the out-of-bound markers, concealed their dissent and controlled the documentations produced. The findings from this paper provide us with important insights into how performance art continues to adapt to and resist the mutating systems of control within authoritarian states.
In addition to the performances themselves, this paper compares the various documentations of each performance, including newspaper reports, interviews with arts practitioners and past scholarship. It must be noted, however, that these documentations are not, and cannot be, read as objective reports of the performances or purely supplementary to the original performance events. Specifically, the documentations are produced and controlled within the same systems of domination and, consequently, have to adopt many of the same strategies as the performances themselves to navigate the control by the state. For instance, the media industry in Singapore has always been tightly controlled by the post-independence ( onwards) government and most forms of dissent must be concealed to escape the many forms of censorship. The interviews, on the other hand, were conducted more than two decades after both performances and are, thus, based on the shifting memories of the interviewees and the act of recalling. The paper, therefore, considers these documentations not only as representations of the original performance events; rather, it examines how they actively (re)shape the reception of these performances. This point will be made clearer in the rest of the article.
Although performed in the s, the insights that can be gained from these two performances continue to be relevant as authoritarian states around the world continue to dominate and control all forms of cultural expressions. This continues to be true in Singapore as exemplified by the many instances of censorship in recent years: In , Tan Pin Pin's film about Singapore's political exiles, To Singapore, with Love (), was banned from being shown in Singapore.  The following year, a day before the book launch of Sonny Liew's graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (), the National Arts Council (NAC)the government agency in Singapore in charge of the development of arts in Singapore, including the provision of fundingwithdrew the grant it promised Liew, arguing that the novel "potentially undermines the authority of legitimacy of the Government and its public institutions and thus breaches our funding guidelines."  These are just several of the high-profile incidents that made the news.
The control of cultural production is evident in other authoritarian countries too. In China, for instance, licenses for exhibitions are frequently denied if they do not meet the standards of the government. The problem, however, is that like in most authoritarian countries, the process for obtaining licenses is notoriously opaque and there was no official reason given for withholding the permits. The Chinese government has also forcibly shut down arts spaces, such as galleries and artists' studios.  Their influence has extended outside the mainland to Hong Kong where three works were withdrawn from an exhibition at M + Museum ahead of its reopening in .  Similar to Singapore, China is also very wary of the performance medium, with many documented instances of the Chinese government cracking down on performance artists. They range from the forceful eviction of artists from the Beijing East Village, a collective of mainly performance artists who often created dissenting works, from their studios and homes in ,  to introducing a set of rules of conduct for performers to follow, including "love for the party and its principles" and serving "the people and socialism." 

Cultural hegemony in Singapore
These efforts to control cultural production reveal the importance of building a cultural hegemony to authoritarian governments. Before I proceed with the analysis of the artworks, I will briefly explain the concept of cultural hegemony, broadly defined as the use of culture to create a Gramscian hegemony or "a socio-political situation […] in which the philosophy and practice of a society fuse or are in equilibrium; an order in which a certain way of life and thought is dominant, in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout society in all its institutional and private manifestations, informing with its spirit all taste, morality, customs, religious and political principles, and all social relations, particularly in their intellectual and moral connotation."  It is primarily achieved through the domination of 'ideology,' or the fundamental presuppositions which underlie any system of belief. Instead of expressing and imposing order as restrictive apparatuses do, ideological apparatuses aim to inculcate a certain way of evaluating things, events and class through the process of socialisation.  In addition to cultural institutions, ideological apparatuses include education, media and religious institutions. Ideology is productive to the rule of authoritarian governments as they can socialise citizens to interpret social or historical phenomena in a particular way. As a result, the ruling class can represent the world in forms that reflect their interests, allowing the priorities of the leaders and their worldviews to be perceived as being natural and beneficial to all.  Singapore presents itself as an interesting case study for the study of cultural hegemony for two reasons: First, with minimal legislative and judicial checks, and a constitution that provides little protection for civil rights, the executive branch has sweeping powers to deal decisively with dissenters using its wide arsenal of censorship tools.  There has also not been any major dissent within the party as members are carefully selected by the top leaders to ensure that all cadres toe the party line. The ruling party, People's Action Party (PAP), also maintains some level of control over most ideological institutions, such as schools and museums. Hence, when the PAP urges citizens to support state ideologies, they are tacitly asking for approval of their ideologies.  As such, the words "state" and "government" are used interchangeably as the legislative and executive power in Singapore resides firmly within the ruling party, the PAP. Second, the government proactively prevents challenges to their cultural hegemony as they regard culture as an important component of nation-building due to its homogenising capabilities.  The government's efforts to create a cultural hegemony began with its attempts to create a "Malayan culture" after it gained self-governance from the British government.  A Ministry of Culture was created to achieve this goal as the PAP leaders acknowledged that the shaping of culture is a "conscious, deliberate and organised effort."  Since then, there have been multiple revisions to what the PAP believes the national culture in Singapore should be, and ideological challenges to their developmental plans and hegemony are routinely discouraged and suppressed.
The cultural hegemony in Singapore is formed and sustained through several key apparatuses. The first is the use of censorship. Over the years, artistic movements that were seen by the PAP to be antagonistic to their developmental plans and hegemony were discouraged and suppressed. In addition to the penalisation of performance art after Brother Cane, there was the clampdown on Mandarin theatre and political woodblock prints in , suppression of the activist Englishlanguage theatre in , and the withdrawal of funding for forum theatre in . Throughout the years, the suppression of arts has been achieved through censorship tools which range from film classification to changing the requirements needed to obtain public licensing and funding.
Second, the PAP government greatly expanded the role of cultural institutions in the s. It was during this decade that the primary cultural institutions todaynamely, the NAC, National Heritage Board, Singapore Art Museum and The Esplanade were formed. The establishment of these institutions led to an increase in institutional support, funding and available venues for art practitioners.  But happening simultaneously was a consolidation of the arts. NAC, for instance, ran as a bloated organisation for many years: on top of the duties of an arts council, which includes administering grants and conducting policy research, it ran several arts festivals, theatre venues and the Arts Housing Scheme, which provides affordable arts spaces to art groups and artists.  Third, there was a surge in public arts funding in the s. The amount given by the government in operating grants to the NAC tripled from S$. million in  to S$. million in , with a total of S $. million in financial assistance distributed to artists.  In the absence of philanthropic organisations and an independent arts council, which traditionally served as arts patrons in other countries, the PAP government effectively became the biggest funder of the arts. However, not every arts practitioner in Singapore benefited from the increase in funding. For instance, artist Amanda Heng states that during the s, the government was not interested in supporting younger and emerging artists like herself. Moreover, her focus was on performance and conceptual arttwo art forms that were not highly regarded by the state during the decade.  According to T. Sasitharan, the Co-Founder and Director the Intercultural Theatre Institute, arts in Singapore became "much more structured" and "aligned with the vision of the government" due to a consolidation of space, funding and regulations by the government.  Ideology, however, must be understood within the context of power hierarchies as it is not a stable set of collective thoughts, but a complex set of relations between people that are centred on power differentials. As ideological apparatuses cannot dominate as obviously as restrictive ones, they often become sites of struggle between the subordinate and dominant groups. For instance, subordinate groups counter dominant ones by utilising ideological contradictions, which will be made clearer in our analysis of Don't Give Money to the Arts.
The two performances demonstrate another method: the use of protest art. In this paper, protest art is defined as artworks which codify and transform the experiences and aspirations of subordinate groups into visual forms. But more than appropriating it, the artwork aims to disrupt the cultural hegemony by exposing the inadequacy or injustices of the system. There are several competing and complementary terms and concepts used to describe such artworks, including "social practice art," "socially engaged art," "dialogical art" and "interventionist art." Each of these terms is used emphasise a different component of the art form. Eric J. Schruers and Kristina Olson write that regardless of the wording used, the general trend has been recognition of the abandonment of older notions about the relationship of the artist to the viewer and any sense of suitable content for consideration within an artwork. The scholars cite Pablo Helguera who writes that "[s]ocially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity."  Schruers and Olson also note that "the myriad forms of expression that fall under this moniker represent a dynamic approach to making art, one that has a core tenet of direct engagement with the public, and a primary goal of social and political change."  In other words, cultural hegemony is formed through the negotiation of acts of domination and dissent: happening simultaneously to the state's formation of its cultural hegemony in the s through the use of censorship, cultural institutions and public funding are wide-ranging acts of dissent by non-state actors, such as artists. Performance artworks, in particular, became a favoured medium amongst Singapore artists to express their dissent as its transient, interdisciplinary and hybrid nature allows protest artists to deliberate socio-political issues with sensitivity and escape censorship.  The performance art form also suits the process-oriented nature of protest art as both seek to expose embedded power relationships through the process of creation.  It also allowed for collaboration between different artists, resulting in the formation of several artists colonies such as The Artists Village (TAV) and th Passage which arguably became collaborative and incubation spaces for the creation of protest art.
Although it has grown in recent years, there is a dearth of scholarship on dissent in Singapore. The available literature is typically focused on the reasons for the low levels of political mobilisation despite the seemingly increasing levels of democratisation in Singapore.  Other studies look at specific protest groups, movements and events, such as the country's LGBTQIA + movement, including Lynette Chua's analysis of the country's gay activists.  How this study differs from earlier ones is the micro-level approach it adopts as it focuses on the study of two specific and interrelated cultural 'objects'or more specifically, performance artworks. This is achieved by creating thick descriptions of the two performances: borrowing the concept from Gilbert Rye and Clifford Geertz, this paper provides intensive and dense descriptions of the two performances that describe not only the performances themselves but also the authoritarian contexts and the social and cultural relationships that they were created within. As Geertz rightly points out, due to the highly complex, selfconsciously shifting nature of these cultural structures, the analysis of culture is "not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning."  By centring the analysis around two performances, the aim is to provide insights into and disentangle the many-layered, often selfreflective dimensions of the experiential webswhat Geertz calls culturein which we live and act and to show the ways that works of art illustrate, express, and help create deeper reimaginings of how we live.  There is similarly a lack of scholarship on performance art in Singapore, particularly academic ones as most of the literature is made up of exhibition catalogues and articles in art periodicals. They include retrospectives on art collectives where members focused on performance art such as TAV and th Passage. One of the most comprehensive academic studies on performance art in Singapore is Ray Langenbach's dissertation on performance art from the city-state created between  and . The scholar focuses on how performances in Singapore can be studied as a site of "convergence and collision" of the divergent visions of the nation-state of the ruling elite and the artists.  In addition, the scholar looks at the rhetoric adopted by the government to create its vision of the nation and how it is challenged by performance artworks from the period. My paper expands on Langenbach's survey of performance artworks from the period through its focus on the specific aesthetic techniques used in performance artworks that allow it to escape punishment by the authoritarian state.

Performing protest in 1990s Singapore
On  November , The Straits Timesthe flagship Singapore newspaperpublished the names and professions of  men who were arrested during a week-long sting operation at Tanjong Rhu, a popular cruising spot for Singapore gay men. The 'victims' were plainclothes police who were reportedly not averse to being approached; one defendant even described the behaviour of the officers to be "keen." The  men were charged with "outraging modesty, using criminal force to molest, and acts of indecency." The six who pleaded guilty were sentenced to jail and three strokes of the cane while those who claimed trial were sentenced but not caned.  This incident would make the news again the following year at the Artists' General Assembly (AGA), a week-long arts event coorganised by th Passage and TAV. For his performance, Ng placed cut-outs of the article " Men Nabbed in Anti-Gay Operation at Tanjong Rhu," on the  tiles that he had placed in a semi-circle in front of him. The artist, who was dressed in a long black robe and black briefs, carefully laid out a block of tofu on each of the tiles before crouching behind each tile and reading random words from the article. He proceeded to strike the floor with a cane and leapt from side to side before ending in a crouching posture. Ng muttered, "Three strokes of the cane. I will give them three strokes of the cane," as he approached the tofu blocks. He tapped the cane next to each block twice before striking the bags of paint and tofu forcefully on the third swing. After striking all the tofu blocks, Ng walked to the back of the gallery; with his back facing the audience, he lowered his briefs before he snipped a clump of his pubic hair (Fig. ).  After Ng's performance and his bare buttocks made front-page news, NAC issued a press statement the day after the article was released, condemning the performance by Ng. In addition to Brother Cane, they took offence to the performance by Shanon Tham who vomited into a bucket as part of his AGA performance. Later that month, the home ministry announced that th Passage, Ng and Tham will be barred from future public performances. The NAC also withdrew all public funding from two art forms, forum theatre and performance art, which was only rescinded a decade later in .  Although Ng was ultimately not jailed, Langenbach writes that Ng admitted in an unpublished  interview that he was very "agonised". He adds: "I'm so young. I haven't finished my education. If I went to jail what would happen to me? It scared the shit out of me!"  In addition to exemplifying how political dissenters were dealt with by the Singapore government in the s, Ng's arrest demonstrated that even short of actual conviction, the mere existence of legal controls could frighten away critical and protest artists. Specifically, prosecutions cost time, money, and physical discomfort, and when dragged out over extended periods, these legal processes sap the material resources and will of activists.  In the end, Ng's performance ended with an unfortunate irony: his name and liking were published in the news, just like the gay men he was speaking up for. Soon after his performance, Ng left Singapore, presumably to escape the public fallout that resulted from his performance.
Rather than being intimidated by how Ng was penalised, the no-funding rule inspired Tang to create what is considered one of the most important artworks of his career: Don't Give Money to the Arts. He performed it at Singapore Art ', the biggest art exhibition of the year that was coorganised by NAC to celebrate the th anniversary of Singapore's independence.  Tang, who was invited as a guest but not as a performer, attended the opening at Suntec City with a jacket which had the words, "Don't Give Money to the Arts" embroidered in gold on the back. When he saw the guest-of-honour Ong Teng Cheong, who was elected president of Singapore in , he asked for permission to put his jacket on and to pass him a hand-written note. In the note, Tang wrote: "I am an artist. I am important." Ong accepted the note, but his aide stopped Tang when the artist tried to speak to the president.  During the performance, Tang also went around to greet and shake the hands of other guests. The people he was photographed with were prominent art practitioners of that time, including Thomas Yeo, then-President of the Modern Art Society (Singapore) (Fig. ), and Brother Joseph McNally, founder of St Patrick's Arts Centre, now known as LASALLE College of the Arts (Fig. ).
This encounter between the artist and the head of state is what most remember the artwork for. What has been overlookedas it is scantly written aboutis his first performance of Don't Give Money to the Arts at the th Asian International Art Exhibition (AIAE) which opened a week before Singapore Art ' did. AIAE was coorganised by the Federation of Asian Artists, Singapore Art Museum and the MAS which Tang was previously a member. He presumably left the group in the s because his practice differed from the modernist style that dominated the practice of MAS members.  In an interview with the media after his performance at Singapore Art ', Tang explained that the idea behind his performance was to tell the president that artists are important and that public money is used to fund "the wrong kind of art"the kind that was "too commercial" and had "no taste."  He did not specify the art form or style, but it is not difficult to hazard a guess as the works displayed at both events were predominantly modernist paintings, sculptures and photographs. With the knowledge of both performances, our understanding of Don't Give Money to the Arts expand from merely a protest of the nofunding rule to a protest of the state's preferential funding and promotion of a particular art style. Unsurprisingly, the government favoured modernist artworks as they were focused primarily on formalist concerns instead of engaging with social issues. Naturally, it was more productive to their hegemony-making as it does not seek to reveal the contradictions or inadequacies of the government's policies or decisions.
According to Chua Chye Teck, who documented both performances, most of the guests that Tang approached laughed at the encounter, including the president.  Additionally, the media approached the performance with intrigue instead of lambasting it as they did Brother Cane.  The performance artwork was also eventually acquired into the national collection. Ng, on the other hand, was heavily penalised for his performance; in addition to the formal punishments mentioned above, he was heavily criticised on numerous occasions by different government agencies. What also resulted from the Brother Cane incident is the stigmatisation of the art form, transforming "performance art" into a "dirty word" during the mid-s.  Evidently, there was a disproportionate reaction by the government, considering that both artworks were as explicit in their protest of the government's policies. It is even more curious when you consider the fact that Tang broke the law with his performances as he did not submit a synopsis or make a security deposittwo requirements that needed to be met before he could qualify for a public entertainment license required for all forms of performances. The next section will investigate why the reactions to the performance works were so vastly different and disproportionate to the extent of their dissent.

Navigating OB markers
Ng was invited as one of the performance artists for AGA, a week-long event that featured rock music, a forum on the arts in Singapore, poetry, workshops, stand-up comedy and performance art, while Tang was not invited to perform at either of the openings where he staged Don't Give Money to the Arts.  As both events attended by Tang are co-organised and sponsored by the state, they naturally attracted greater media attention and higher attendance from public officials than the independently-organised AGA which had relatively limited funding and a smaller turnout. Moreover, Tang's performances were at the National Museum Art Gallerythe foremost visual arts museum of that timeand the Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Hallone of the biggest convention centres in Singaporewhile Brother Cane was performed at th Passage's private office and studio space tucked inside an obscure corner in a shopping mall.  Considering the public profile and physical locations of the performances, it would seem more fitting if Don't Give Money to the Arts received the backlash instead. However, what is more important than the physical site of the performance is for artists practicing in Singapore to learn to navigate the "out-of-bounds markers." "OB markers", as it is more commonly known, is a colloquial term used in Singapore to mean the boundaries that define what is considered acceptable political discourse and expressions by the government. Transgressors face indeterminate penalties ranging from public rebukes to criminal charges. But these markers are often ill-defined and constantly mutating; the only way to know where these boundaries lie is to cross them and risk being penalised.  The effect of the OB markers is best described by Jacques Derrida: 'Within the rules, one is free to movebut one's movements are already limited […] there is a law that assigns the right of inspection, you must observe these rules that in turn keep you under surveillance.'  Consequently, many artists will actively avoid crossing these markers, leading to self-censorshipwhether they are aware of it or not.
Specifically, Tang navigated the OB markers by utilising the contradictions that already exist in the ideological apparatus of the government. The artist managed to perform at both openings by using the government's vague definition of performance artas "scriptless public performances" against them. Although it is commonly accepted as a performance artwork today, it was not immediately clear to the people present, including the organisers themselves, as there was no clear definition of the art form. Tang's actions revealed the futility of government policies in regulating arts in Singapore, particularly an art form which is ephemeral and is constantly innovating and evolving. More interestingly, the unwitting collaborators of his performancenamely, the guests that Tang greeted with his jacket as well as the presidentwere all part of the cultural framework which helped to marginalise performance artists and their works. As Eugene Tan noted: "By implicating the president in a performance that had not been permitted, Tang demonstrated artists' ingenuity in circumventing restrictions on artistic expression and highlighted the significance of art that could not be readily commoditised."  Tang was also keenly aware of the other subtle forms of OB markers, like the social decorum expected when interacting with the president. He did not insist on speaking with the president when he was stopped by the aide. His astuteness in navigating all these invisible markers allowed him to bring political protest into institutional spaces: not a representation of protest, but the real thing. Tang's approach to his 'protest' can be described as "pragmatic resistance."  Although protesters in Singapore aspire towards legal reform and greater protection of their rights, activists avoid deploying tactics familiar to civil societies in liberal democracies, like protests and strikes, for fear of persecution as they are considered illegal in Singapore. Additionally, activists believe that infringing these laws will cost them their cultural legitimacy amongst Singaporeans who are socialised to value social order above all else and to disdain open confrontation. At a more fundamental level, pragmatic resistance is employed by civil society to ensure that the movement survives.  By performing in the exhibitions and spaces that actively rejected performance art, Tang temporarily re-appropriated them, bending and rejecting the rules set by the various cultural institutions. Arguably, his careful intervention into these spaces allowed him to reclaim them, taking on the very rules that withheld acknowledgement of his work and transforming it into the aesthetic strategies that allowed his performance artwork to flourish. Ng, on the other hand, squarely crossed the OB markers as he unambiguously criticised the police in his performance, considered a much more sensitive issue than criticisms of cultural policies. Even to this day, the government routinely takes people to task for public criticisms of the police.  There is presumably more room for cultural policies to be debated because issues surrounding culture and the arts are perceived to be more subjective and less destabilising to the PAP's rule.

Concealment of dissent
Art is regarded with suspicion in authoritarian regimes because of its ability to counter political oppression. However, it gained this political status not through explicit political content but through the indirect and concealed use of aesthetic techniques to produce the "illusion of disenfranchisement".  This includes the use of irony, metaphor or humour which helps creates the illusion that an artwork is not political although it clearly is.  In Brother Cane, Ng used his props and actions to symbolise the injustices faced by gay men in Singapore: the cane points to the caning of the  men; the blocks of tofu represent the bodies of those men; the splattered tofu and red paint symbolise the permanent marking of their bodies from the caning and the government's decision to publish their names; he shaved his head before the performance in solidarity with the men who were imprisoned. The strategic use of symbolism was combined with the pacing, scripting and movement of the performance to direct a specific reaction from the audience: shock.
Although Ng concealed most of his critiques in symbols, any doubts that his performance was not a protest of the police's use of entrapment and the discriminatory laws against gay men in Singapore was dispelled when he turned his back to the audience to snip his pubic hair and declared that "Sometimes, silent protest is not enough."  As mentioned, this performance infringed OB markers of that period as it directly criticised the action of the police. In addition to the ideological component of the performance, the government also took offence at the use of nudity and snipping of pubic hair in public, with NAC declaring that "by no stretch of the imagination can such acts be construed and condoned as art."  The statement is unsurprising as Singapore has always had strict laws against all forms of nudity and overt expressions of sexuality as it is the government believed that it can upend the traditional 'morality' of Singapore.  Tang's performance artworks, on the other hand, have been described as "elusive," "humorous" and "ironic."  The same can be said about Don't Give Money to the Arts which inspired laughter amongst the guests who Tang approached.  But more than entertainment, the use of humour is tactical as it is used to conceal his dissent. The performance can be compared to satire, which is understood as an attack on a person or institution through comedic devices.  Tang concealed his criticism of the government's narrow perception of the arts using tonguein-cheek humour and reacted to the people he approached (most of whom he knew personally) with civility. The ambiguity allowed him to bypass the post-Brother Cane regulations which included stricter licensing for public performances and the need to submit a script for performance artworks.  More importantly, Tang was criticising cultural institutions as an esteemed member of it. At the time of his performance, Brother Cane, Ng was a -year-old art student.  Tang, on the other hand, was already an established artist: beginning his artistic career in the s, he had exhibited in numerous local and international shows, and won several international accolades. Although controversial, his performance was consequently read as 'avant-garde' instead of deviant.

Control of documentations
Although the live performance itself is fleeting, the artwork continues to exist in public discourse when it is documented, shared, and thereby preserved. The documentation produced from the performance extended the life cycle of Brother Cane and fragmented our understanding of the performance as it creates multiple points of entry into the artwork. This allows for unexpected (relative to the artist's original intentions) interventions and new interpretations at any stage of the dissemination of documentation. The harshest reading of Brother Cane undoubtedly came from the PAP government: multiple government agencies came out to condemn and vilify Ng and his performance.  I believe that the reason that the performance elicited such a harsh response from the government is that it sought to fracture the body politic of Singapore by highlighting the injustices he faced as the 'other': a gay man persecuted by the state for enjoying cruising as he did.  As a result, Ng was publicly punished for his dissenting performance and used as an example by the government to demonstrate their control over cultural production and their willingness to suppress any art form that sought to threaten it.
But like myself, the members of the government officials and members of the public who criticised the performance were not present to witness Brother Cane themselves. Instead, their reading is based on the negative coverage of the performance and the AGA by The New Paper which focused on only one moment in Ng's performance: the snipping of his pubic hair. This phenomenon is best summarised by Philip Auslander who notes that, "the presence of that initial audience has no real importance to the performance as an entity whose continued life is through its documentation."  Fellow artist Gilles Massot posited that the actions of the government were the direct result of the public furore incited by the press coverage, especially since the previous th Passage event attracted similarly bad press when Leow drank his urine for his performance.  Despite the careful scripting and choreographing of Brother Cane, the performance did not end with the rousing applause of the audience who were present at the event. Instead, it continued to live through the circulation of the photograph of his bare buttocks; the debate surrounding his performance; and the coverage of Ng's trial. What this demonstrates is that not only does the documentation of performances need to be read as a performance itself, but it can also result in the creation of a completely different performance. Namely, the press coverage of Brother Cane flattened the performance to Ng's snipping of his pubic hair and provided a reading of the performance in line with the government's ideology. The news coverage of Brother Cane questioned whether the performance can be defined as art. It is, therefore, unsurprising, that there was a difference in the reaction between the audiences who viewed Brother Cane in person and the ones who encountered the performance through the news report. As J.P. Park explains, "the textual or photographic traces of a performance to a definitive degree 'fictionalise' and activate the performance as an event rewriting itself […] If we admit to this operation of photography independent of the performance, we must also acknowledge that the photographic record of a performance becomes 'something other than performance,' and that something simultaneously alters the event."  What this incident also reveals is that the definition of performance artworks by the government, as script-less public performances, include performance documentations as Ng was punished based on the media reports of Brother Cane.
Tang, on the other hand, enlisted Chua to help him to take photographs of his performances. It is a common practice amongst performance artists to collaborate with photographers, especially among the members of TAV. Tang, for instance, would often get Koh Nguang How, another member of the TAV, to document his performances. Arguably, the TAV members understood the importance of documentation as their performances are often limited to a small audience in their kampung  studio in Lorong Gambas. The photographs, therefore, allow their performances to be circulated and viewed by a larger audience.
But according to Chua, the artist did not give him specific instructions on what images to take. Instead, Chua took them based on his reading of Don't Give Money to the Arts and his experience from being a wedding photographer. It was Tang, however, who selected the photographs to be shown.  It is through the collaboration between these two artists that the images we remember the artwork by emerged: the image of the jacket; the photograph of Tang approaching Ong; and the image of him taking a photograph of the seated guests with his compact camera.
Although Don't Give Money to the Arts was not scripted as meticulously as Brother Cane, Tang unwittingly exerted greater control over the interpretation of his artwork as he controlled the documentation as well as their circulation as he decided on the images to be shared. Over the years, Tang continued to shape the audience's understanding of the performance by providing more information through interviews. Ng, on the other hand, must watch silently as others debate over his performance as any comments he made would risk him being charged with contempt of court.  Consequently, although Ng created more public awareness for his performance and the social issue it dealt with, the performance is remembered and interpreted mainly through the scandal it created. What this resulted in is the eclipsing of his original intention, which is to protest the discrimination against gay men and the use of entrapment by the police.

Concluding discussions
I began my research into performance art from s Singapore as I was intrigued by how the art form continued to flourish despite the nofunding rule and the negative stigma surrounding it. Specifically, I wanted to examine the tactics used by the artists which allowed them to continue to protest government policies and escape punishment. What is even more impressive is that they managed to navigate the tightening government control so shrewdly that many of these protest artworks have been canonised as shining examples of contemporary Singaporean artworks by the same powers they sought to criticise.
For this paper, I zoomed in on two such works one that acted as a catalyst for the no-funding rule and the stigmatisation of the performance art form, Brother Cane, and another which was created in protest of the withdrawal of funding to performance art, Don't Give Money to the Arts. Through my analysis of the two performances, which elicited hugely disproportionate responses from the state, I found that for protest art to navigate the systems of control within authoritarian states, it must be able to identify and manoeuvre the shifting OB markers. Although the term "OB markers" was created out of the Singaporean context, it is present in different forms in other countries as all governments aim to shape culture to varying degrees. As intuitive as my proposition sounds, it is a difficult task to achieve because if the dissent is too well concealed, there is a chance that it might not elicit any response or change in the viewers. To create an artwork that is impactful enough to stimulate awareness amongst viewers of the social issues they are advocating, artists often have to 'cross' the OB markers, bringing them into direct confrontation with the government and other hegemonic powers.
However, it is not enough for artists to be willing to risk persecution or create performances with shocking content, especially since it can lead to a heavy-handed response by government agencies which can tighten state control around the arts, rendering their protests counterintuitive as it makes it more difficult for future protests to be staged. Arguably, Don't Give Money to the Arts was a more effective piece of protest artwork as it managed to successfully navigate the OB markers in every aspect of the performance, from the choice of venue to the production of documentations. As shown in my article, Tang achieved this in three important ways: First, the guerilla and improvisational nature of his performance subverted the government's understanding of performance artworksso much so that many government officials unknowingly became participants in the performances. Second, Tang employed satire, which is seen as a more acceptable form of dissent as it produces more ambiguity in its messaging and is seen as less confrontational due to its tongue-in-cheek delivery. Third, Ng did not control the documentation of his artwork, resulting in his -minute performance being reduced to a single image while Don't Give Money to the Arts is remembered today based on the images that were produced by Tang in collaboration with photographer Chua. Although Brother Cane was carefully scripted and Ng managed to achieve more public awareness for his performance, he was vilified as a troublemaker by the government and the media which detracted viewers from the original intention of his performance.
It must be noted that the aim of this paper is not to create a 'guidebook' on how protest artworks can navigate the OB markers of authoritarian states, especially since these boundaries are constantly mutating. Instead, the analysis of the two performances demonstrates to us the potential of performances artworks: to reveal the futility of the government's efforts in trying to maintain absolute control culture and to challenge the 'naturalness' of the hegemonic values and norms instilled by the powerful. sponsored exhibition, the artist approached the president of Singapore while wearing a jacket embroidered with the words "Don't Give Money to the Arts". Although it was as explicit in its criticism of the government and its policies, Tang was not penalised for his performance. In this paper, I conduct a comparative analysis of these two works to examine how protest artwith a focus on the performance art formnavigates the cultural hegemony in Singapore by comparing the tactics used in both performances by analysing how and why Tang managed to escape punishment for his scathing performance while Ng did not. Specifically, I look at how the performances navigated the "out-of-bound markers" and concealed their dissent, and how the artists controlled the documentations produced. The answers to this question provide us with important insights into how protest art continues to adapt to and resist the mutating systems of control within authoritarian states.

Goh Wei Hao
King's College London National University of Singapore E-mail: weihao.goh@kcl.ac.uk